In the U.S. Pat. No. 3,946,276 to Braun et al, entitled "Island Assembly Employing Cooling Means for High Density Integrated Circuit Packaging" dated Mar. 23, 1976, it was shown that to maximize the operation of high density integrated circuits for high speed computer systems, an efficient cooling means was required to secure thermal impedance control. The packaging system disclosed and claimed therein was oriented toward high quality production and assembly to achieve minimum costs and, as shown, included at least one island which comprised an assembly of a plurality of integrated circuit packages of the leadless type, connectors for receiving the packages, an inter-package connection medium and a cooling frame. The island cooling frame supported the assembly and further incorporated a continuous tubing arranged in a serpentine path through which a liquid coolant was pumped to carry away the heat generated by the integrated circuit packages. This heat transfer was accomplished efficiently by permitting metal heat sink plates formed as an integral part of the integrated circuit packages to contact the cooling frame sections so that the circulating coolant maintained the island at a substantially uniform temperature. The patent also taught the manner in which a plurality of such islands may be interconnected through the use of ribbon-type interconnect cables having terminal boards at each end which were adapted to plug into similar connectors and that several islands could be housed in a console.
To improve, however, the operation and adaptability of the island assembly to which the aforesaid patented invention pertains, it has been found desirable to provide for interconnection of the patented system to other systems and to other devices, such as I/O terminals, manufactured by the assignee of this invention or by others, to combine the patented system with other types of integrated circuit packages manufactured by this assignee and by others and to mount them in a cooling frame of the same overall dimension so as to be housed in the same or similar sized console, and to subject these packages to the same or similar circulating coolant. It, of course, was found to be desirable to do all this with a minimum of modification so as to lessen the cost and yet maintain the high quality production and assembly processes to which the patented invention was oriented.